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Abstract
With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, employers are seeking methods to properly comply with the legal tenets of this law. One potential area of research for Industrial/Organizational Psychologists concerns the effect of different test administration accommodations on the employment test scores of disabled applicants. In the present study, 57 learning disabled (LD) and 59 nondisabled (ND) subjects were tested to identify the effect of test administration time accommodations (extended time and unlimited time) on the scores on a commonly used employment screening device, the Wonderlic Personnel Test (WPT). The study also examined which test administration time limits best predicted performance on three clerical job tasks.
The results indicated that the ND outperformed the LD under the 12-minute, the 18-minute, and the untimed conditions. Untimed test scores exceeded timed test scores for both groups. The ND also outperformed the LD on the first clerical task, but there were no significant differences in their average performance for the second and third tasks.
A regression analysis was utilized to determine whether task performance was related to the group (LD vs. ND), the test score (ND 12-minute and LD untimed) or the interaction between the group and the test score. The analysis revealed there was a significant relationship to test score, a marginal difference for the group and no significant interaction. These results indicate that the WPT is equally predictive of task performance when employing standard administration for the ND and unlimited time for the LD. Due to the significant difference in the group scores, caution must be used when setting cut-off scores so that the LD are not selected out of the applicant pool. The most appropriate accommodation suggested by these findings is that unlimited time should be provided for LD taking the WPT while maintaining a standard administration time limit for the ND.
